Abstract

This paper will raise more questions than provide solutions to the pertinent issue of information literacy in public universities in Malaysia. Reader/user education and library instruction programme have been and still are the mainstay in academic libraries that serve these universities. The need for information literacy, the inevitable outcome of the ‘information society’ and now the ‘knowledge society’ continues to be debated and discussed by librarians and educators around the world, including Malaysia. The role of information literacy in higher education is entrenched in the philosophy of education itself – to develop the potential of individuals intellectually, among other aspirations. An overview of the reader/user education and information literacy programme of several public university libraries (of UM, UKM, UPM, UIAM, UiTM, UUM, USM, etc.) will be presented to gauge what activities are run and how they are run, including coverage/curriculum and the use of information technology, their targeted audiences, and their objectives. Then there is the need for evaluation to enable librarians to rise to the challenges of planning and executing strategies for more effective information literacy programme.